Fedora Linux

Configuring a Domain Name Server

Domain name service (DNS) is like a telephone-directory service for TCP/IP networks. When a program such as a browser or mail server needs to contact a machine for which it has a hostname, it uses DNS to convert that name to a numeric network address. DNS can also do the reverse: convert a numeric address to a hostname.

It is necessary to have DNS set up before you can serve data to the Internet. Although you can contract for DNS service from an external provider, Fedora Core provides a nameserver that you can easily set up to provide your own DNS capability.

How Do I Do That?

Fedora provides the named domain name server, which is the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND). named serves two roles:

authoritative nameserver

Serves name information about one or more domains to other servers.

caching nameserver

Provides name lookups for client programs such as web browsers by contacting other nameservers. This information is cached in local storage in case it is requested again in the near future.

Tip

The Fedora package called bind contains the named service.

The named service is not run by default. Once you configure it to run (see Lab 4.6, “Managing and Configuring Services”), it will act as a caching nameserver:

Tip

If you just want to use named as a caching nameserver, you can skip to the section entitled “Using your nameservers locally.”

To configure named as an authoritative nameserver for your domain, you just have to give it the information about ...